Beginning today the European Space Agency (ESA) will broadcast a “live stream” from Mars for the first time to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Mars Express mission. The images will be taken by the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) on board the spacecraft and will be streamed every 50 seconds. However, due to the distance between Earth and Mars, it will take 18 minutes for each image to travel from Mars to Earth. The VMC camera is an old piece of equipment, and the team is not sure if it will work properly. The mission has been running for almost 20 years, and the equipment is getting outdated. Scientists will process and release the images on Flickr every couple of days. The live stream is as close to real-time as possible given current scientific limitations.
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